PARENTS SETTLED IN THE REPUBLIC OF TEXAS, Page #0057

PARENTS SETTLED IN THE REPUBLIC OF TEXAS

By Joseph S. Cruze, Sr., San Antonio, Texas.

My parents, William and Isabella Cruze, came to the Republic of Texas in 1840 and
located on the Brazos River in Washington County. There I was born July 27th,
1845, and when I was three. months old father placed a buffalo hair pillow on
the horn of his saddle, placed me thereon, mounted his horse and was ready to
emigrate west with his family. He settled on Onion Creek, nine miles south of
Austin, near the Colorado River, where he remained for several years, then in
1854 we moved to the central part of Hays County, where father died in 1856.

I enlisted in the Confederate Army in 1862, received my discharge in 1865, and
returned home to my widowed mother. On July 24th, 1865, I was married to Miss
Mary Kate Cox of Hays County.

In the years 1870 and 1871 I drove cattle to Kansas over the old Chisholm Trail.
I remember the killing of Pete Owens, who was with the same herd I was with. We
had reached the Cross Timbers of Texas, and passed